Page 99 of Sunsplitter

She lunged for it. Not fast enough.

With a snap and a flare of feathers, the aedari vanished. Gold flashed inside the farmhouse. Then again, on a distant forest ridge.

“No!” Ixli shouted.

She vanished in a sizzle of static—Fi assumed to give chase.

Fi locked eyes with Antal. A weighted pause hung between them, the apology in his gaze worse than a sword through the chest.

“Antal. Take me with you—”

He disappeared before she finished speaking.

Gone without her.

Fi screamed after him, filling the empty yard.

He heard Fionamara call out not to leave her.

He heard her scream in between his teleporting.

Carrying a human would slow him down. Antalhatedthat she’d slow him down, but the aedari was fleeing, and Ixli was moving so Void-damned fast.

It wasn’t easy to chase someone through teleports. He spotted a flash of white hair far ahead. He jumped to the spot. He searched again. Spotted her again. Jumped again. Each move, he pushed as swiftly as possible, the shallowest dips into the Void, the outline of the Summer Plane almost visible as black blurred his vision. Still, it was a game of catch-up.

Tracking the aedari was even harder. It left a scant trail, hints of its burnt-sand and honey scent. It passed through the house. Into the forest. Over the ridge. The creature could only teleport in its sightline, but it was flinging itself as fast as it could, no pause between jumps. At each step, Ixli had to scent, had to reorient her trajectory. Precious extra seconds.

She was never going to catch up. The stubborn daeyari kept running anyway.

The trail passed through a Curtain, off the Summer Planeand onto a Shard. The ground was loamy, strewn with gossamer leaves and trees of knotted silver bark. Dim light seeped from the nearby Plane, but no sun was visible overhead, only black Void sky.

“Ixli!” Antal shouted.

She kept moving. Another Curtain. Another Shard.

Dusk coated this sliver of reality, still no sun, but the ground was hued rose and purple. A rocky shore circled a lake, the water dark and glass smooth.

“Ixli, wait!”

When she still didn’t heed him, Antal tackled her. She fell snarling, claws scraping loose stones as they crashed together to the shore. He didn’t attempt the futile struggle of containing her. When Ixli slipped from his grasp, she staggered forward, stones skittering with each step.

Again, when she dropped to her knees.

Ixli tilted forward and shouted her defeat into the Void, bearing all her fangs.

Antal lay on his back, rocks sharp on his shoulders and clacking his antlers. His lungs filled with the chilled scent of the Void, crisp as home and older than Veshri’s ether-spun bones. The aedari’s smell was faint. Already fading. From here, it could have bolted through a dozen different Shards, lost in the maze of fragments.

Antal pushed to his knees. He moved toward Ixli as if approaching a wild beast.

She hunched, head bowed, claws dug into the lakeshore.

“It got away,” she hissed.

“Ixli.” He tried for soft. She’d always liked soft, but would never admit it.

“I let it get away.”

“We’ll find it again. You’ll get another chance.”